Austin Hill made some of his own history Saturday in the secondary United Auto Rentals 250 race during the NASCAR San Diego Weekend at Naval Base Coronado.
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Hill passed Taylor Gray in the third turn of the last lap to score his first O’Reilly Series win on a road or street course after 15 top-five road racing finishes in his career.
“This is extremely special to finally check that box with a road course win,” said Hill, whose Chevy Camaro gave Richard Childress Racing its first victory since the death of Cup series star Kyle Busch.
“This is a great win today,” said an emotional Childress, who owned the cars that Busch drove while driving in the O’Reilly Series.
“We all miss Kyle,” he continued as his voice broke.
Hill said he asked for Busch’s help as he challenged the leader just two laps after Gray had slid past Carson Kvapil for the lead.
“I asked Kyle to find me an extra gear and there it was,” said Hill.
Gray finished second with Alpine’s Sheldon Creed third at the end of the 60-lap, 200-mile street race that took a record 6¾ hours to complete due to two red-flag stoppages that ate up 61 minutes plus eight caution periods.
Gray blamed his loss on “wheel hop,” which he also said was the problem that gave him the lead five miles earlier over Kvapil.
”When Hill challenged me, I had wheel hop and slid off the line,” said Gray.
About his pass of Kvapil, Gray said he had “wheel hop” while getting inside the leader and forced Kvapil into a slide that dropped the leader’s JR Motorsports to fourth — denying the team owned by Dale Earnhardt Jr. a 12th straight win on a road or street course.
“It’s really hard to make peace with that,” Kvapil said of Gray’s claim. “That one really hurts. I hate getting the wrong end of it. Taylor and I have had incidents before.”
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Kvapil had taken the lead from Gray with a clean pass with 14 laps to go in Turn 9. Kvapil then pulled away before the handling on his Camaro began to fade, aiding Gray’s comeback.
Creed had moved up to third when the final caution came out with 19 laps to go. But as Creed was leaving the pits on his final stop, he lost four positions when he was caught up behind a slower car that was in the wrong lane on pit row.
The incident dropped Creed to eighth on the track, leaving him too far back to challenge for the win over the final laps.
Saturday’s first red flag was for 18 minutes when, on the race’s first lap, the weld came off a sewer cover with the metal disc becoming airborne and going through the radiator of a car.
The second red was for an accident triggered by Sam Mayer on the 35th lap that involved 23 cars and stopped the race for 48 minutes.
“I can’t believe I did that,” said Mayer, who got over-aggressive in Turn 1, clipped the outside wall at the top of the downhill and gathered up the field behind him.
“I’m sorry. What am I doing? I have to be better. The visuals here are tough. I got a little too aggressive. I went around the entire garage and apologized.”
Brent Crews, 18, won the pole position for the O’Reilly race earlier Saturday with an average speed of 91.143 mph. Hill qualified fourth (90.967) and Creed qualified seventh (90.661).
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